Corzine: If We Had ‘Sense Of Urgency,’ We Could Provide ‘Access To Affordable Health Care’

Today, in an interview with ThinkProgress, Gov. Jon Corzine (D-NJ) argued that if Americans displayed a “sense of urgency about health care, we could get to an answer on providing universal access to affordable health care to all citizens”:

Recent events where we have been able to marshall resources for what we describe as a financial crisis, among our financial institutions, and we have been able to pull together $700 billion to spend in a given point in time, with literally trillions of dollars in back-up and loan guarantees and other things tell me that if we had the same sense of urgency about health care, we could get to an answer on providing universal access to affordable health care to all citizens.

Corzine admitted that a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s health care system would require “funding” but predicted that “in the long-run it actually may save us money, because if we get people out of the emergency rooms, we’ll stop financing charity care and start financing health care.”

“We’ve shown in the last several months that if America feels challenged by a crisis, it can come up with the money,” Corzine added.

Transcript:

Recent events, where we have been able to marshall resources for what we describe as a financial crisis, among our financial institutions, and we have been able to pull together $700 billion to spend in a given point in time, with literally trillions of dollars in back-up and loan guarantees and other things tell me that if we had the same sense of urgency about health care, we could get to an answer on providing universal access to affordable health care to all citizens.

And I think it’s time to do it because we have a real crisis. We have growing numbers of uninsured, we have far too many of our people in the country, certainly in New Jersey, that are impaired in their own financial lives because they can’t afford either medical care they forced into when they don’t have insurance, or they can’t afford the carrying costs of the insurance they do have .

And I think it is essential that we pull together a strategic response. I think President-elect Obama has talked about that, has a workable program that’s going to need funding. In the long-run it actually may save us money, because if we get people out of the emergency rooms we’ll stop financing charity care and start financing health care. But it needs to be done and we’ve shown in the last several months that if America feels challenged by a crisis, it can come up with the money.